PHILADELPHIA — Let’s start with a list. It’s the regular-season defensive rating of the past 10 NBA champions, along with where that number ranked in the league at the time.

The exact rating, spread over time, can be a bit noisy. It’s era-dependent. In 2004, seven defenses had a rating under 100. This season, zero defenses are below 104. Offenses have become too good, 3-pointers too prevalent, rules tilted too much in their favor.

So it’s the ranking that tells the clearer story. Against the same players, facing the same rules, in relation to the rest of the league, how well did they defend? The future NBA champ, almost always, is somewhere in the top 10 when the regular season ends.

You’d have to extend that list all the way back to the 2000-01 season — when the Lakers, with a 103.5 rating, finished way down at 22nd — to find the last future champion to fall out of the top 10.